Somtaaw wrote:<snip>
All ships seem to carry nuclear tipped missiles. This is evident because most books show all interceptions of merchant ships to use a nuke as a warning shot. Further evidence is when Grendelsbane was destroyed by Manty nukes during the RHN sneak attack.
Yes, but as mentioned by Harold, all missiles have nukes for warheads, so even a laserhead missile could be used as a warning shot, or even a contact nuke, if the opportunity should arise. The only thing that makes a laserhead missile work as a laserhead missile is deploying the laserheads a couple hundred meters forward of the nuke warhead that remains in the missile. This provides enough distance to allow the x-rays from the warhead (which is what "powers" the laser in the laserhead) to reach the laserhead before the blast front destroys the laserhead.
Somtaaw wrote:Now, standard laser head standoff range is what, around 50 thousand kilometers? Assuming you have a pod salvo from hell coming at you, a large nuclear salvo set to detonate seconds prior to the laser heads detonating makes a near solid wall to protect your squadrons or fleet. The missiles no matter how spread out during approach must come into a known area of space to detonate.
While the attack area is known, it is also very large. That 50k km distance is a radius, because the missile could also go *past* the target while facing backwards and attempt for a hit from the non-engaged side. Or could maneuver for an attempted kilt or throat shot. So, while the majority of missiles may attack the broadside, there may be others attempting hits from elsewhere. This means that if you're going to attempt something like the Triple Ripple, it should be done much farther away, while the missiles are still inbound and haven't spread out as much.
Somtaaw wrote:The nuclear tipped missiles would just detonate first. This really is just a super sized version of existing RHN missile defense, using brute force, little to no accuracy, and numbers to compensate for lower technology to RMN defenses.
Yes, but as was also pointed out upthread, that requires displacing *many* of the RHN's attack missiles.
Somtaaw wrote:Also I checked out the honorverse wiki, we've partly been arguing over nuke power. Both the standard nuclear missile and the standard laserhead are fusion based. Current real nukes are still fission I think.
Some current RW nukes are fission and some are fusion - it all depends on what effect and/or yield you want. Fission nukes are less powerful and are usually tactical nukes, where the yield is in the kiloton range. Fusion warheads are strategic and measure in the high-kt range to megaton-range. Also, as Harold mentioned, a fusion nuke uses a fission nuke as an igniter for the fusion portion of the detonation.
Somtaaw wrote:Also found on the wiki that MDM missiles have sensor shrouds to protect from particle damage during potentially long ballistic phases. This indicates that missile sensors are indeed able to be blinded, if a sufficiently large nuclear detonation happened in their face.
Yes and no. It's basically just the cover over the laserheads and any internal components of the missiles, much like ICBMs have a shroud over the MIRVs. It's simply there to protect the sensors from particles that will be encountered when travelling at high cee-fractions. However, because there are internal sensors on the missile, the shrouds are equivalent to today's radar-transparent radomes on aircraft - usually fiberglass or similar. So while particles may not get through to damage internal or laserhead sensors, there's a definite possibility of various forms of radiation getting there to "blind" them.
However, if anyone cares to look closely at my missile renders, you might notice that each laserhead has three types of sensors at the forward end: radar (or its Honorverse equivalent), LIDAR, and gravitic. As others have pointed out, gravitic sensors would ignore any kind of radiation-type interference, but because of the size of the sensors, the range is *very* limited, so they don't come into play until the last few seconds before warhead detonation. They're used for final target acquisition and the laserhead has thrusters and gyros to help it line up on the general area that it thinks the target is located.
Missile sensors are much more powerful and sensitive (plus, they are receiving updates from the ship that launched them) than those on the laserheads, and are used for midrange targeting en route to the target. The gravitic sensors will be able to tell there's a grav signature "out there, thataway", but it will be like looking at a highway sign when you forgot your glasses - you can see the sign, but until you're close enough, you can't read what it says.
If you really want to try playing Russian Roulette, you could try to time your defensive launch to detonate after the laserhead shrouds are jettisoned, and the laserheads are moving forward of the rest of the missile to attack position. However, that entire sequence only takes, at most, a few seconds. The timing on that would have to be incredibly precise. And again, that goes back to my second paragraph, where you have to worry about covering a sphere with a 50k km radius.
